Hillfolk
''Hillfolk'' is a tabletop role-playing game designed by Robin Laws and published by Pelgrane Press. It was initially launched via Kickstarter in 2012, with the funding being sufficiently successful that a second book called "Blood on the Snow", containing 33 new settings, was produced as a part of the kickstarter. Reception was positive, with RPGamer saying "mechanics don't so much get out of the way of roleplay as provide a supportive foundation for it to happen." Hillfolk is influenced by the Indie RPGs of the 2000s, and emphasises relationships and interpersonal conflicts among the player characters, rather than what the system calls "procedural" scenes putting the characters against external obstacles. As a result of the successful Kickstarter, ''Hillfolk'' incorporated additional settings by Jason Morningstar, Ken Hite, Matt Forbeck, and Emily Care Boss, among others. The game won the Indie RPG awards for Game of the Year and Best Support for 2013 and the 2014 Diana Jones ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Robin Laws
Robin D. Laws (born October 14, 1964 in Orillia, Ontario, Canada) is a Canadian writer and game designer who lives in Toronto, Canada. He is the author of a number of novels and role-playing games as well as an anthologist. Career Robin D. Laws has been a professional game designer and an author since the early 1990s. Game designer Robin D. Laws has been playing role-playing games since he was a teenager and has worked as a game designer since the early 1990s. John Nephew of Atlas Games convinced Jonathan Tweet to publish a game he had been writing about in ''Alarums & Excursions''; Laws talked with Tweet about the game in ''A&E'' and contributed to the final product as well, the result of which was '' Over the Edge'' (1992). Daedalus Games began when Laws approached Jose Garcia in 1993 with an idea for a Hong Kong Action Cinema RPG; while Garcia liked the idea, his first priority was his own setting, '' Nexus: The Infinite City'' which was published in 1994 with Garcia as the m ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pelgrane Press
Pelgrane Press Ltd is a British role-playing game publishing company based in London and founded in 1999. It is co-owned by Simon J Rogers and Cat Tobin. It currently produces GUMSHOE System RPGs, '' 13th Age'', the Diana Jones award-winning ''Hillfolk'' RPG, ''The Dying Earth Roleplaying Game'', and other related products. It publishes fiction under the Stone Skin Press imprint. History Pelgrane Press was founded in 1999, and was initially owned by Simon Rogers, ProFantasy Software, and Sasha Bilton. It is co-owned by Simon J Rogers and Cat Tobin. GUMSHOE System The GUMSHOE System was designed by Robin D. Laws for running investigative, clue-finding games: * ''The Esoterrorists'' and '' Fear Itself'' by Robin D. Laws, based on the ''Book of Unremitting Horror'' by Adrian Bott and Dave Allsop * '' Trail of Cthulhu'' by Kenneth Hite * ''Mutant City Blues'', a near-future gritty police procedural Superhero setting by Robin Laws * '' Ashen Stars'', a darkly rebooted investigativ ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Indie RPG Awards
The Indie RPG Awards are annual, creator-based awards for Indie role-playing games and supplements. They were established in 2002 by Andy Kitkowski, and are the most sought-after awards in the ''Indie RPG'' community. For the purposes of the Awards, there exists a following "definition" of an Indie role-playing game: * A game where the creator is the person who has written at least 50% of the actual game content. * A game where the creator has full control of content and publishing. * A game where the creator is the publisher, with full control over expenses and profits. Categories The following categories for nominations have been used throughout the history of the awards: *Indie Game of the Year - the main award for Indie Games. *Indie Supplement of the Year - for best Supplement for an Indie Game. *Best Free Game - for free Indie Games. *Best Support - for the publisher has best supported a previously published game or supplement. *Best Production - for best written and most at ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Emily Care Boss
Emily Care Boss is an indie roleplaying game designer, theorist and publisher. She was a foundational member of The Forge, an early leader in the indie role-playing game movement and is considered the creator of the American Freeform genre of roleplaying games, which combine indie RPG principles and mechanics with Nordic freeform and American chamber live action role-playing techniques. Her game, ''Under My Skin'' was winner of the Audience Choice Award at Fastaval 2009. She has been referred to as the "Dean" of the North American school of structured freeform game design. Career Emily Care Boss got involved with role playing games while at college in the 1990s, playing ''Ars Magica'' using a shared world setting created by friends. She credits talking with other users at the Forge Forums during the early 2000s with helping her to get involved in design and self-publishing. Her first game '' Breaking the Ice'' was published in 2005.Designers & Dragons: The Planinum Appendix p. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Diana Jones Award
The Diana Jones Award is an annual award for "excellence in Role-playing game, gaming". The original award was made from a burned book encased in lucite. The award is unusual in two ways: first, it is not an award for a specific class of thing, but can be awarded to a person, Product (business), product, publication, company (law), company, organization, event or Fads and trends, trend – anything related to gaming; second, it does not count popularity or commercial success as a sign of "excellence". The award was first presented in 2001. Nominees are circulated during the year to the committee, which is mostly anonymous but which is known to include Peter Adkison, Matt Forbeck, John Kovalic and James Wallis (games designer), James Wallis. The committee is anonymous to protect the voting process from interference, but individual judges are free to reveal themselves. The committee releases a shortlist of three to seven nominees in spring, and the award is presented to the winne ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Role-playing Game
A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game, RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of player character, characters in a fictional Setting (narrative), setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting or through a process of structured decision-making regarding character development. Actions taken within many games succeed or fail according to a formal role-playing game system, system of rules and guidelines. There are several forms of role-playing games. The original form, sometimes called the tabletop role-playing game (TRPG), is conducted through discussion, whereas in live action role-playing game, live action role-playing (LARP), players physically perform their characters' actions.(Tychsen et al. 2006:255) "LARPs can be viewed as forming a distinct category of RPG because of two unique features: (a) The players physically embody their characters, and (b) the game takes place in a physica ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kickstarter
Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, Kickstarter has received $6.6 billion in pledges from 21 million backers to fund 222,000 projects, such as films, music, stage shows, comics, journalism, video games, board games, technology, publishing, and food-related projects. People who back Kickstarter projects are offered tangible rewards or experiences in exchange for their pledges. This model traces its roots to subscription model of arts patronage, where artists would go directly to their audiences to fund their work. History Kickstarter launched on April 28, 2009, by Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler, and Charles Adler. ''The New York Times'' called Kickstarter "the people's NEA". ''Time'' named it one of the "Best Inventions of 2010" and "Best Websites of 2011". Kickstarter repo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Indie Role-playing Game
An indie role-playing game is a role-playing game published outside traditional, "mainstream" means. Varying definitions require that commercial, design, or conceptual elements of the game stay under the control of the creator, or that the game should just be produced outside a corporate environment. Independent publication of role-playing games Indie role-playing games (RPGs) can be self-published by one or a few people who themselves control all aspects of design, promotion and distribution of the game. An independent role-playing game publisher usually lacks the financial backing of large company. This has made forms of publishing other than the traditional three-tier model more desirable to the independent publisher. Formats Independent publishers may offer games only in digital format, only in print, or they may offer the same game in a variety of formats. Some major RPG publishers have abandoned PDF publication, probably as a counter-piracy effort. Common digital form ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Evil Hat Productions
Evil Hat Productions is a company that produces role-playing games and other tabletop games. Chief among them is the free indie RPG, ''Fate'', which has won numerous awards. History Fred Hicks had been working with Lydia Leong, Rob Donoghue, and others to run LARPs at AmberCon NorthWest starting in 1999, and came up with the name Evil Hat for themselves. While on a trip to Lake Tahoe, friends Hicks and Donoghue developed a new game based on a conversation about running another ''Amber'' game and fixing some problems with ''FUDGE''; the result was ''Fate'' which Hicks and Donoghue would publish under the name Evil Hat. Donoghue and Hicks released a complete first-edition of ''Fate'' through Yahoo! Groups (January 2003) then cleaned up the technical writing and slightly polished the system for a second edition (August 2003). Hicks and Donoghue began work on the licensed '' Dresden Files Roleplaying Game'' in 2004, but publication was held up because they decided to use ''Spir ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jason Morningstar
Jason Morningstar is an American indie role-playing game designer, publishing mostly through Bully Pulpit Games. Morningstar's games often lack a Game Master and are often set in situations that quickly go unfortunately for the player characters. Grey Ranks (2007), for example, is about doomed child soldiers in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, and ''Fiasco'' (2009) is about impulsive crooks pulling heists that are sure to go terribly wrong. With these two games, Morningstar became the only named person to have won the Diana Jones award twice as of 2013. Morningstar also works with academia and industry, consulting on using games for teaching and learning in education, with a focus on health sciences. Games Jason Morningstar's tabletop role-playing games tend to be GM-less and about things going badly, and published as Bully Pulpit Games. He has also contributed to supplements for GURPS and Trail of Cthulhu, a nano-game to ''#Feminism'', and several games about healthcare. The Shab-al- ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ken Hite
Kenneth Hite (born September 15, 1965) is a writer and role-playing game designer. Hite is the author of Trail of Cthulhu and Night's Black Agents role-playing games, and lead designer of the 5th edition of ''Vampire: the Masquerade''. Education Hite holds an M.A. in International Relations from the University of Chicago and a bachelor's degree in Cartography from East Central University. Career Kenneth Hite has been designing games part-time since 1981 and full-time since 1995. Some of his early design work was featured in the ''Nephilim (role-playing game), Nephilim'' role-playing game for Chaosium before the line closed down in 1997. After a freelance career, Hite came to Last Unicorn Games and joined the developers working on the "Icon system" for their line of licensed ''Star Trek'' role-playing games; to get ''Star Trek: The Next Generation Role-playing Game'' ready for GenCon 31, Hite was flown out to Los Angeles for two weeks. After ''Icon'' was completed, Hite was made t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Matt Forbeck
Matt Forbeck (born August 4, 1968) is an American author and game designer from Beloit, Wisconsin. Biography Forbeck first became interested in role-playing games at age 13 when he started playing ''Dungeons & Dragons''. He earned a degree in creative writing from the Residential College at the University of Michigan and graduated in 1989. Forbeck began working full-time on games and fiction after graduating. He was the editor on an adventure by Gary Gygax for New Infinites Productions, New Infinities called ''Epic of Yarth: Necropolis''. He wrote ''Outlaw'' (1991) and ''Western Hero'' (1991) for the Iron Crown Enterprises and Hero Games. Forbeck and Shane Hensley formed Pinnacle Entertainment Group to publish ''Deadlands''. Forbeck spent four years as the president of Pinnacle and was the director of the adventure games division at Human Head Studios for two years. Forbeck left Pinnacle to move to Alderac Entertainment Group just before the two companies ended their relationship, a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |